


'You were waiting to die (the whole time)'

by lazyroughdrafts



Series: Beast in the Headlights [5]
Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, and Jaime?, aromantic Joan, so...., well she once bought Joan two dozen of her favourite cupcakes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-22
Updated: 2015-03-22
Packaged: 2018-03-17 14:21:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3532571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazyroughdrafts/pseuds/lazyroughdrafts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Do you know what it takes to make the cut?"</p><p>..... ..... ..... ..... .....</p><p>The refrain begins like this: "Where is Moriarty?"  Sherlock asks. Detective Bell asks. But not Joan.</p><p>"Where is Moriarty?"  She finds Joan in time. But Moriarty? No one can find her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	'You were waiting to die (the whole time)'

**Author's Note:**

  * For [randolhllee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/randolhllee/gifts).



> Thank you for all the thoughts! Especially aromantic Joan!
> 
> So, you guys for some reason I'm really nervous about posting this. Randolhllee shared some awesome thoughts about these two, which may or may not have successfully made their way into this fic. We'll see. If it works? Then the credit in large part is due to her. Conversely? If it doesn't work? Then the fault is entirely my own because i wrote the thing, and only one set of eyes has seen the thing, and the thing is not what it ought to be.

_2 Weeks Ago_

 

Jaime had been watching Watson staring down at the murky waters vacillating below them until a hapless pigeon maundered close to her heel earning it an indignant kick for approaching with such impunity.  A still meditative Watson turned towards the sudden movement and noted the foolish creature did not attempt to stray far, pecking at the ground for remnants of a pastry they had shared. Jaime with nose still crinkled in some disgust, then broke their not uncomfortable silence with, "I'll be out of town until Thursday." Joan had snapped out of her introspective trance, a peculiar mixture of displeasure and suspicion agitating her eyes at the sudden announcement. Even so, she'd only responded with, "What time are you leaving?"

 

Jaime had tilted her head in continued scrutiny of Watson's every reaction. "A little after nine."  She'd replied pressing a domino into her palm and watched silently as Watson struggled to pull the two ends apart. Her still swollen yellow-green posied wrists hampering the action. Though she made no move to aid her, Jaime had watched the struggle intently enough that it could have been interpreted as concern. Joan when she'd succeeded, looked down at the flash drive and spoke into her upturned hand before looking up. "You heard what was on the wire." It was not a question.

 

"What was left of the exchange, yes." The vaguest shade of acrimony lacing words delivered with studied accusation.

 

Joan had slid the pieces back together and pressed it back into Jaime's palm. Letting her fingers linger. They hadn't spoken about Kayden Fuller. They would never speak of Kayden Fuller or how it was exactly that she knew that Modest Averin had been behind the kidnapping. And Jaime couldn't bring herself to ask.

 

"Don't do anything stupid."

 

The brusqueness in Joan's voice elicited an impish smile, "Is that your way of telling me to return safely?"

 

_..... ..... ..... ..... ....._

 

 

_12 Weeks Ago_

 

"You are very like a laser." She had remarked to no answer at all. No incoming recognition of the statement besides a vaguely impatient tuck of the chin. The lack of acknowledgment having failed to hinder her enthusiasm for the analogy, "Incessant waves of concentrated light." She had said this while circling closer and closer towards the unimpressed but unmoving woman. "Focused and seeking and finding. All the answers with that narrow gaze of yours." She'd tilted her head as if staring in wonder at a figure having just freshly escaped from marble. "You get this look on your face." She'd mused sounding thoroughly charmed by the force of a memory effortlessly brought to mind.  And then reached as if to touch the side of her face but retracted her fingers almost as if she'd drawn too close to flame and nearly burnt the tips. "I'm afraid I'm quite taken with it dearest Watson."

 

"Christ Jaime. I'm not that." A new, more aggressive irritation had animated her eyes.

 

"Not what darling?" And though she had laced her question with the usual dose of detached amusement she had given herself away. Having too carefully curved her tongue around the endearment, held it in her mouth a beat too long, too softly to convincingly affect indifference.

 

"First off I'm not your darling." No sign of hostility remaining even as she had objected. The quietness of it having dispelled any real offense although a vague sense of discomposure remained. "Light." She'd said.

 

"Oh?" And there it had been again. A smirk of idle diversion cloaking the fervour of her interest.

 

"Do we have to keep doing this?" Joan in steps had edged further away from the Caravaggio on loan.

 

"What other things would you rather we do?" The intensity in her eyes belied the airy suggestiveness of the quip.

 

"Just stop." She had squeezed the bridge of her nose and turned away completely. Her back to the painting. While Jaime had turned towards it in the same movement, either unable or unwilling to look away.

 

_..... ..... ..... ..... ....._

 

_4 Weeks Ago_

 

A battle weary Sherlock pressed a domino into Moriarty's palm, forcing her fingers to curl around them in an angry fist until an audible hiss escaped lips painted a threatening redness. "The file's been corrupted. But everything you need to know is there.'' He shook his head at her, driving his hands into his pockets in a bid to contain himself.

 

Moriarty's palm unfurled pink like a blossoming time-lapse flower to reveal a black piece. Three white dots and two. She separated the halves and flicked her thumb over the flash drive before slotting the pieces back together. Looking up at him only then, into his contempt, with something close to the same. She'd left any pity she may have felt at the gauntness of his face and unkempt state resolutely at the door.

 

"If anything happens to her." His lips pursed in a curious display of failed restraint curled into a sneer. "I'll kill you myself."  And again, there was no mistaking the _her_ in question. His concern for Marina had simmered away leaving behind the fainest residue once he understood her disappearance for what it was, a power play.

 

She reached over to remove a sizable piece of flint from his shirt and lightly smoothed away a stubborn crease over his breast pocket. He flinched under her touch and she dipped her head under the momentary strain of the relentless pounding in her head. A pounding that had started with the first terse phone call of the day and five meager words, _"She did this for you."_

 

She looked up at him. Any trace of scorn vanished in the turbulence in her veins as she rubbed his left bicep fondly and squeezed. The smile when it shone was indulgent. Wistful even in its inception. Until she shaped her lips into a weaponised curve, elegant in its violence.

 

"I'm sure you will dear." Fingers curled round the device in her left hand as nails painted in 475 Dragon dug without mercy yet bloodlessly into her palm.

 

"And I look forward to it." She said lightly as he was once again presented with her retreating figure. Her plunging back revealing Alpha Draconis wandering further north.

 

 _She did this for you_.

 

Five words in rhythmic succession hammered battle drums in her head. All the answers digging their way into her skin.

 

..... ..... ..... ..... _....._

 

_Present_

 

"Why did you do it?" Jaime whispers to Joan's back in the breaking darkness, as light bleeds through awkwardly and uneven. It is too earnest. Too gentle almost. As if remembering herself, demands louder and without apology, "Why Joan?"

 

The still figure remains silent except to sigh and slowly turn onto her back. Until a reaching hand grasps at the thin cloth of her top and tugs and tugs. And so she turns onto her side. The grip slackens somewhat but remains. And Jaime doesn't think about anchors. She tries not to think of the reasons why she is not letting go. Of why fingers have found her wrist or why those same fingers are not demanding release. Of why they remain circled round her wrist like an echo.

 

"I wish you'd stop doing that." Joan says and shuts her eyes.

 

"What exactly am I doing?"  She lets go of the camisole then and Joan opens her eyes, letting them fall on the fugitive hand that's turned the tables and now captured her own. Jaime tries not to think about the pulse point beneath her thumb. She doesn't think of why the feel of it reassures her.

 

 "Asking questions you've already worked out the answers to."  Joan repositions herself. Propping herself up on her elbow so that she is looking down, hovering almost over a face in grey scale demanding a fleshing out in colour.

 

"I want to know, Joan." And for once nothing is masked in those five words. Her grip grows firm and her thumb presses more insistently.

 

  
"You quoted Francis Thompson yesterday." Joan curves and waits until Jaime's face relaxes into a small but curious smile and her hold on that wrist loosens once more. "I did. But why is that relevant?"

 

"I pay attention when you quote poetry written by Ripper suspects at me."  A quirked brow is all the response she is willing to offer but Joan continues regardless. "Is that how you see us? That I'm what, Saint Joan Watson pursuing your sorry soul? Because fuck that. And fuck you Jaime."

 

The rare expression of raw emotion unbalances Jaime and so she deflects.

   
She deflects and it is a reflex. "You certainly did a good job of that last night." But it is a reflex that incites, even if quickly disposed of, regret.

 

Joan pulls her arm away with vehemence and slumps back, staring at the ceiling and rubbing her forehead. Jaime transfixed by the rapid shallow rise and fall of that chest says nothing, that chest she had only hours ago caused to rise and fall even more rapidly.

 

She waits. She wants it all. So she waits.

 

An angry silence rests between them until it seeps away and is exchanged with something like resignation.  "How many times do we have to go through this. I am _not_ a saint. And you? You're not a god. You're not even a monster." 

 

Jaime provokes her again in a bid to ignore the rising tightness in her own chest and the increasingly brutal thudding in her head. It is not a reflex. She asks coyly enough but the breathlessness is not feigned.  "An animal then darling. A beast." Her smirk turns to a grimace as the skin around her temples seems to recede and pinch, while invisible fingers strum tissue for all the highest notes.

 

"Animals aren't even _animals_." It is enough of an answer to silence Jaime. It is enough without having to name a seven-year-old girl as evidence.

 

Jaime eyes her thoughtfully and sits up and reaches for Joan's arm again. And there it is _again_. Too gentle. Too earnest. "Why did you do it?"

 

Joan closes her eyes, covers them with her free hand and inhales. 

 

"Because of the way he was looking at you."

 

Covered eyes do not see the swiftly advancing onslaught of daybreak revealing the confusion bending that cherubic face to its will.

 

"And how was he looking at me Joan? How was he looking at me that was worth getting yourself killed?" The question is acid even as she reaches to remove Joan's hand from her face. As she reaches down again to tug at Joan's shirt. To tug and tug.

 

"Almost." Her correction is unapologetic. But it is said quietly. And for that reason alone it does not sound flippant.

 

"No, Joan. Killed. You died." She flattens out her voice deliberately. The dryness at the back of her throat would be telling. And she doesn't want it told.

 

Joan looks up at nothing on the ceiling, working out her endless calculations in dotted lines and vertices. Growing the tree, before lowering her gaze. Before finding Jaime's.

"Like you had humiliated him. Like he was going to teach you a lesson first."

 

Jaime blinks.

 

She understands everything then.

"You got yourself killed so he wouldn't rape me." She states blankly.

 

Joan sighs. "I didn't get myself killed. It was a calculated risk I _chose_ to take. He was more likely to underestimate me."

She paused to look at Jaime. "I made a decision."

 

 Jaime knows then what it is to understand everything and absolutely nothing.

 

"I made a decision."  And that's what threatens to unravel her completely. The repetition.

 

So she tugs and tugs and burns her lips again as light dances across shiny black hair. As fervent fingers work to remove the last vestiges of their clothing.  
Jaime reaches for Joan's arm gingerly this time and lifts it to her lips, kissing the inside of her wrist. In this soft light, she can see her more clearly. The freckles sprinkled across her face and the traveling strays wandering down her chest. She kisses her palm before an outstretched hand claims her neck captive and coaxes their lips together.

Jaime opens her mouth to her, pressing in, allowing herself to be burned entirely.

 

Self-immolation in the arms of a woman she realises she may never fully understand.

 

..... ..... ..... ..... .....

 

_5 Weeks Ago  
_

 

It was a black tie affair. Jaime was wearing a long backless gown made almost entirely of gold-tipped feathers.

She had looked lost in thought in front of a painting hanging a few feet away from them but felt Joan's unspoken question ionising her skin. Rather than comment on the intensity of her gaze, she'd reached her arm out sightlessly in her direction for a hand that was forthcoming.

 

Jaime answered without looking at her.  "I've been in New York the whole time."

 

Other eyes had been watching them that evening. Watson had noticed but Moriarty had not.

 

She had thought Joan exquisite that night, dressed as she was in a red dress that uncovered only her shoulders and revealed the light dusting of freckles reaching to her breasts. She had wanted to map them with more than her eyes but had not thought the evening would end with her mouth discovering their trails.

 

But Watson had noticed.

 

Later that night, between too many eyes and not nearly enough champagne, she had been the one to reach out for a hand that was forthcoming. Had gestured for them to leave. Had said, "I'm staying with you tonight."  Jaime had marveled at those five words. Had not expected Joan to be so gentle. Had not understood the softness of that yielding body or the carefulness of those hands.

 

Had not understood.

 

Two weeks later she would find her hanging naked, clothed only by copious amounts of her own blood and posed like a bird wounded in flight.

 

 

..... ..... ..... ..... .....

 

The recording is not entirely clear. It has been cleaned but it is fragmented.

One fragment though is remarkably clear.

 

_"You're wrong. She's not the psychopath. I am. I was a neurosurgeon._

_Do you know what it takes to make the cut?  Carefully contained psychopathy._

 

_And Moriarty never uses knives."_

 

..... ..... ..... ..... .....

 

_Present_

 

 

Sherlock thinks that Jaime is still sleeping upstairs when he asks.

 

"Have you seen the paper this morning." He asks waving a rolled up copy of the Times in her direction.

 

She shakes her head slowly. Invisible hands turtled in her sleeves wrap round her mug more tightly.

"They found the bodies?"

 

There is a measure of disinterest in her voice that gives Sherlock pause. He nods tightly and scratches his brow. "Yes, it appears they were all stabbed. Knived rather methodically and with great precision."

 

Joan nods absently.

 

Sherlock starts to say something but stops himself. Physically straightening his back as he does so.

He scratches his brow again. "Are you in love with her, Watson?"

 

Jaime's eyes narrow as she strains to hear the conversation.

 

Joan shrugs her shoulders but looks away and then into her mug.

 

"But you're choosing her." He eyes her quizzically.

 

She looks up then and holds his gaze unwaveringly before responding. "I am."

 

"Why?"

 

She looks away from him only to catch sight of Jaime whose smug grin grows unrestrained and dazzling.

 

"I haven't worked out the answer to that question yet."

 

Joan sips slowly at the strong black coffee but keeps her eyes locked on Jaime's for a beat before looking away.

 

_"I drink it black like my heart," Moriarty had said once._

**Author's Note:**

> Preview of coming attractions.... If the next fic is a piece of highly improbable fluff for these two (maybe)
> 
> Jaime's fingers are idly drawing swirls on Joan's hip. Joan who is curled into her side, eyes closed. She stills her fingers momentarily and leans in to press a kiss to the corner of her mouth before whispering in her ear.
> 
> "You do realise what this means Joanie." Eyelids flutter but remain closed. A barely audible, "What?" is exhaled into her neck.
> 
> "You're in love with me." There it is. The teasing. 
> 
> "Hmm?"
> 
> "I win."
> 
> "You win nothing." 
> 
> "I've won three times already this morning."
> 
> Joan opens her eyes enough to roll them. But squeezes them shut. Jaime notes that she could easily roll away, but she does not. Joan stays rolled into and almost completely curled into Jaime's naked body. 
> 
> "You're clearly in love with me."
> 
> "I'm not in love with you."
> 
> "The evidence suggests otherwise dearest. You love me. And you very recently had your fingers in me. So."
> 
> "Stop talking."
> 
> "It's obvious. You're completely in love with me."
> 
> "Stop."
> 
> "Make me." 
> 
> ..... ..... ..... ..... .....
> 
>  
> 
> So, this is it for this particular series based loosely on "Fangs" by Little Red Lung.
> 
> Also?
> 
> The unnamed painting is Caravaggio's Christ at the Column.  
> The name of Francis Thompson's poem 'The Hound of Heaven' is not stated but implied.
> 
> Alpha Draconis is the Bayer designation for Thuban (Arabic: snake), a star system in the constellation Draco.


End file.
